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Wednesday, August 15, 2012

TLC BOOK TOUR and REVIEW: And When She Was Good by Laura Lippman

SynopsisAlready praised as "a
writing powerhouse" (USA Today) and "among the select group of novelists
who have invigorated the crime fiction arena with smart, innovative,
and exciting work" (George Pelecanos), New York Times bestseller Laura
Lippman is constantly sending reviewers back to their thesauruses in
search of new and greater accolades. Her brilliant stand-alone novel,
And When She Was Good, only reinforces the fact that she stands tall
among today's bestselling elite--including Kate Atkinson, Tana French,
Jodi Picoult, and Harlan Coben (who raves, "I love her books ") Based on
her acclaimed, multi-award-nominated short story Scratch a Woman, And
When She Was Good is the powerfully gripping, intensely emotional story
of a suburban madam, a convicted murderer whose sentence is about to be
overturned, and the child they will both do anything to keep. Lippman
has already won virtually every prize the mystery genre has to
offer--the Edgar(R), Anthony, Agatha, and Nero Wolfe Awards, to name but
a few. They'll now have to invent a few new awards just to keep up with
her.

Laura Lippman was a reporter for
twenty years, including twelve years at The (Baltimore) Sun. She began
writing novels while working fulltime and published seven books about
“accidental PI” Tess Monaghan before leaving daily journalism in 2001.
Her work has been awarded the Edgar ®, the Anthony, the Agatha, the
Shamus, the Nero Wolfe, Gumshoe and Barry awards. She also has been
nominated for other prizes in the crime fiction field, including the
Hammett and the Macavity. She was the first-ever recipient of the
Mayor’s Prize for Literary Excellence and the first genre writer
recognized as Author of the Year by the Maryland Library Association.

Ms. Lippman grew up in Baltimore and attended city schools through
ninth grade. After graduating from Wilde Lake High School in Columbia,
Md., Ms. Lippman attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of
Journalism. Her other newspaper jobs included the Waco Tribune-Herald
and the San Antonio Light.

Ms. Lippman returned to Baltimore in
1989 and has lived there since. She is the daughter of Theo Lippman Jr.,
a Sun editorial writer who retired in 1995 but continues to freelance
for several newspapers, and Madeline Mabry Lippman, a former Baltimore
City school librarian. Her sister, Susan, is a local bookseller. Check out the author's websiteFollow the author on Facebook

My Thoughts

SUBURBAN MADAM DEAD IN APPARENT SUICIDEThe headline catches Heloise's eye as she waits in the always-long line at the Starbucks closest to her son's middle school.

This is the story of the life of a prostitute, but it is so much more than that. Heloise is one of those suburban "madams" that you read about in the papers from time to time. Her life as been kept "compartmentalized", as she thinks of it, and most people only see one side of her life. Either they know her as the successful madam who runs her business...well, like a business... or they know her as a lobbyist widow raising a son on her own. And ne'er the twain shall meet. The one knows nothing of the other, with very few exceptions in her life.

I liked the character Heloise later in life. I wasn't always the biggest fan of her in her younger years. But part of that may be because the character wasn't as fully developed in her younger years. It was more like brief flashbacks over the years, so there were always holes left in the story. After a turbulent childhood growing up poor in a small town with an abusive father and a bowed mother who has submitted to her life, the present-day portion of the story takes place when Heloise (formerly "Helen") is 37-years-old and living in suburbia.

As an adult, Heloise gives every appearance of being a woman in total control of her life. I say "appearance", because even she must admit later that none of us truly have control. There are just too many things outside of our control. Heloise is trying to do things as "right" as she can, given that she works in an industry deemed "wrong". This isn't just the story of a prostitute-- it is the story of a mother's love, and what a mother will do to protect her child. Growing with a mother who put
her abusive husband (well, sort of husband) in front of her daughter,
Heloise now puts her son a priority before everything else. Everything
she does is for him.

While Heloise circumvents oncoming middle-age and a son entering his teens, she reassesses her life and decides it is time to restructure and reinvent. But as she is breaking free from the ties that bind, danger and ghosts linger in the shadows. My final word: I enjoyed this book. It is my first Laura Lippman, and probably won't be my last. Engaging and just suspenseful enough to wonder where she's gonna go with a thread of the storyline, and containing so many elements of a story that I've had in my head for 20 years now, I found the story ultimately interesting, and Heloise a character for whom I could root.
Thank you to TLC Book Tours for allowing me to be part of this tour:

I received a copy of this
book to review through TLC Book Tours and the publisher, in exchange for
my honest opinion. I was not financially compensated in any way, and
the opinions expressed are my own and based on my observations while
reading this novel.